Double digits

Today is my first daughter's tenth birthday. She lucked out to have her birthday fall on parent teacher conference week. It was a present in its own right. The school district gave her 5 days off for her birthday. Awesome. When I was a little kid, my Catholic school used to give me a similar present. November 1st is All Saints Day, a holy day of obligation. So my friends and I would trick or treat late (past 8 PM) and be able to sleep in the following day. When I got older, the school decided to have kids go to school instead, and they (maliciously) took that day away from me. I ended up not only having to go to school, but having to go to mass during the day and again with my parents at night. Where is the fairness in that?

Daddy got up early to make heart shaped waffles, strawberries and whipped cream, hash browns & turkey bacon for breakfast. (Yes, I know it is Friday, but this is her birthday!) Luckily, Lil'T gets Fridays off from preschool. When Princess announced that she wanted to have a real piggy bank for her birthday, I had the idea of going to one of those paint your pottery places in the next town over. We made a full day of it. 'Cess picked out the largest pig they had and Lil'T picked out a dog. I made a spoon rest that looks like the title of my blog. I used the same color scheme and a hibiscus too. I'll post pictures next week. The pottery place messed with us a little psychologically. There definitely is a time shrink aspect to being in there. We noticed that they had one song on continuous loop, probably for an entire hour while we were there. Maybe they want to make you forget that you're spending so much time working on a piece. We were there for about 2.5 hours but only heard 3 songs. I wonder if it drives their staff loopy. Then again, it could just be that the staff really liked those 3 songs. Don't know.

After painting, we went to a bakery and the girls got to pick out cookies. 'Cess picked out one that was as big as her head -- cinnamon swirl. Lil'T got a 4 pack of yellow frosted smiley faced cookies. And just in case they didn't have enough sugar on board, we stopped by Dairy Queen to pick up the birthday cake. Both girls opted to get some kids meals with a slushy and an ice cream cone for dessert. Maybe I should have them do some push ups before we leave for dinner. 'Cess wants to to go Red Robin for burgers and shakes. She's bringing her vegetarian best friend with us. Hoo boy, maybe they have grilled eggplant burgers. Certainly they'll have grilled cheese. That should work.

I love birthdays with my kids. My husband is really freaked out that we don't have a big wowzer of a present planned for her birthday, but I don't really think it is necessary. I think having a full day of just fun time, of more yes than no's from us, strawberry heart shaped waffles and turkey bacon (favorites of hers both)... these are experiences that are gifts. Who really needs a new shiny? What is important is the gift of time, laughter, and memories.

Yup, today, I'm feeling like a pretty good mom.

Resistance is futile

Very exciting news for the next Starship Excelsior. My wonderful Hubby has been cast as one of the collective. Yup! A BORG!!! Pretty sweet. It is also the first time he'll be on one of these without me. I couldn't be more excited. I guess Vesant won't be in this one. *sigh*

I really liked her.

Vesant (like pheasant with a vee) part 2

Here it is:
http://starshipexcelsior.com/episodes/

Episode 305:  Trust, But Verify

If you are desperate to hear just me and Hubby, scroll to these time stamps.

33:34 Me
34:04 Me
39:00 Hubby
49:15 Me

At 18:25 there is some gagging sounds that could be Hubby, you'll have to discern that yourself.

The interview

As part of an assignment, my 13 year old had to interview my mother about her life when she was a child. My mother was 3 years old and the 7th of 9 children, when the Japanese occupied the Phillipine Islands. My son thought that was an interesting topic and really wanted to explore that in depth. He recently asked (more like demanded but such is the life of a mother) that I transcribe the interview for him. Here's the thing I don't want him to know.

I'm glad he made me do that.

While my mother had told me things about that time in her life, it was always a scant collection of stories. Most of the time she said that she didn't remember too much because she was so little.

In this interview she spoke of how her father was pulled out of their apartment in the city by the Japanese a number of times and questioned. Her mother and her siblings kept vigil, praying and worrying all night until my grandfather came home. My grandfather was not a part of the government or an official of some sort. He was a CPA. Mom recounted how they fled the city in a horse drawn cart. How her brother told them to go to the province because at least there was fresh food there and very few Japanese. The supplies and resources were scarce during the occupation because those things were intercepted by the Japanese and the people had only the soldiers' leavings.  Her eldest brother was in his early teens. She remembers that it was he who had friends in the province farmlands that gave their family refuge. She suspects this brother might have been a guerrilla fighter or at least helped the resistance and the American soldiers. He was maybe 14 - 16 years old at the time. She spoke about how her mother died at age 43, only 5 years after the war ended.

My son asked a question that probably was worded poorly. Maybe he was asking how the family interacted during all of this. How did they cope? What happened during the darkest moments? But no, he instead asked this:

"Did your family feel stress?"

Stress. That euphemism for anything that might bother us like a parking ticket or a library fine. Even the bigger dramas like looking for a job or fixing a septic system pale in comparison to the stressors my grandparents faced. And when he asked the question, to me it felt like a first world question and not anything that remotely applied.

But my mom instead said that she thought it was incredibly stressful for her parents. She said that she thinks that was why her mother died so young; the stress of moving her 9 children, the eldest of whom was helping the resistance and was gone for weeks at a time, and the effort to keep her family together, safe and fed, left her with insufficient reserves to fight off illness when it came.

Mom also talked about her evil stepmother. The kids had nicknamed her "Kabayo," which means "horse." It was not a term of endearment. And before I heard this particular story, I would never have labeled her the evil stepmother. But that is a post for another time.

After I was done transcribing, I did what any good Asian mother would do. I piled on the pressure.

I told my son that he's the eldest grandchild. That he needs to do a great job because he's inadvertently stepped into the role of family historian. There is the chance that his younger cousins and siblings won't have the opportunity to do this interview. As much as it pains me to admit, it could happen.

 And if any of you are lucky enough to have your parents around, set up your recording devices and start talking. You'll be amazed at what you find out.

Channeling my mother

I was on the way in to drop off  Lil'T at her preschool. I happened to be behind a fellow parent and her young son. Anyway, she tried to tell her son to hold the door open for me and my daughter as we were entering. He wandered off as though she were speaking a different language. This mom turned around to me and, embarassed, apologized for her son's manners. I told her not to worry about it and recounted to her how my son will hold open a door for the people behind him but stand in the opening. It is hard to explain without a picture, but we're pretty much left to duck under his outstretched arm or just take hold of the door ourselves. It isn't as much of a problem now.

He's 6 feet tall.

Anyway, we stepped on the elevator not because we were lazy to walk up the steps but because we were with people who insist on pushing elevator buttons. We were laughing about how you just don't see common manners anymore. I mean, the young people these days! They don't know how to open a door for somebody or how to hold a door when somebody is behind you on the way out of a building. We were well on our way to discussing how the music of today is just noise when that recognition came. We both turned into our respective mothers for a moment. Damn.

Sure we laughed it off. Acknowledged it even. Still, I hate that. I am still young at heart (whatever that means) and I've got the maturity to embrace being silly. I've got my radio firmly fixed on 89.5 FM, less talk, more non-stop dance music. I refuse to hear stuff played at my Junior prom on the oldies station. REFUSE! But I know it is there.

Ah hell, who am I kidding? I'm listening to NPR just like the rest of you Class of '87 folks out there.

We got game! Yes, we do! We got game! How 'bout you?

For the second year in a row, we've hosted a geeked out Game Night for New Year's Eve. I apologize if I forgot to invite you directly, and next year I'll improve on that too. Maybe you can just assume that we're hosting and you can come. If you ask what you can bring, I'll say something to eat during game play because I won't be serving dinner, just heavy pupus. I will, however, make mochiko chicken. And if you like, you can bring something to drink, but we'll have punch, sodas, and beer. Each time we host one of these things, I discover something new to add.

The first year, I desperately wanted to play a spooky game called Arkham's Horror, based on the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. If you don't recognize Lovecraft's name, you'll recognize all his characters because just about all the scary bump in the night stories out there have their roots in Lovecraft's universe. That was a totally geeked out 5 hour game at least. Not a great choice. Lesson learned. Lost players and interest pretty quickly, and being the host of the festivities didn't afford me the luxury of playing it.

This year we selected games that take a shorter time to play. We had 3 zones of play. There were the console games area and a board game table in the downstairs living room. Upstairs, we had refreshments and a nice place to chat or play in that living room.

I had envisioned that the kids would play games in one room, the adults in another, and the teens in yet another area. But I think the way it went was a lot more organic and worked out fine.

Next year, I think I want to play Puerto Rico and Ticket to Ride with expansion pack. Both are great games but we didn't even open the boxes.

I participated in the game Portrayal (which works best with adult only players) and Mexican Train. We also played Camp which is probably the best game for different age players. It is a trivia game with 4 levels of play:  preschool, school age, teen age, and adult. One of our teen aged contestants was so well versed in the outdoor/wildlife trivia, we voted her to be an adult player.

To improve for next year:

• Short tables for the living rooms. Aside from the dining table, which got overrun with snacks, we need to put coffee tables or ottomans with boards on them to make a good playing surface.
• Short games work better than long games, so use the games  30 min - 1 hour in length.
• Hide the muggle games (i.e. Monopoly, Scrabble, Life - sorry Maggie, Taboo, etc.) Muggle games have their place, but the Euro games are so much more interesting and challenging.  
• Have an area for card games. We didn't really address those and we've got great non-muggle card games. 
• Make a sign that points out the beverages are being stored on the back deck. Make a sign for the recycle bin. Get punch cup hangers. Remember champagne flutes.
• Somehow remove the curse from the dice rolling tower which repeatedly rolled ones for me. It was so bad, other players wouldn't even let me touch their dice for fear that my low rolling cooties would get on them.
• More mochiko chicken. 'Nuf said. 

I'd like to make a plug for game nights no matter what. When my eldest was in preschool, he had a pretty bad stutter. It was gone by kindergarten, but took lots of work and parental retraining... a post for another day.  One of the things that the speech therapist suggested was that we start playing board games. While I'm sure my mind went numb from repeated playing of CandyLand, the board games forced us to slow down, teach good turn taking, and most importantly, listen carefully to our child. Turns out he wasn't the only one who needed to learn how to communicate. We don't play games as often as Hubby would like but when we do, it is always a break from the usual tuning out of each other's lives. The kids laugh and rarely break down in tears. We have an extensive collection of board games and really, they're treasures I'd go as far as to say that if you're considering getting married, you need to play a board game with each other first. You can learn volumes about each other.

Vesant (like pheasant with a vee)

Hubby and I have been cast in the next episode of Starship Excelsior. I am reprising my role as Vesant (a.k.a. Pilot #1) , a fighter pilot. Yup, I am sure you can tell why I was cast as this. I am a fighter pilot on the inside. That's my inner me.

Rob's got 2 roles. He's Martinez & Random Crew Member. The director called the role of Martinez a "difficult and thankless role". Rob's line: 15 seconds of agonized screaming. It is not as easy as it sounds. Just try it. Maybe even right now. As you're looking at your iPhone in the Starbucks reading this post, just haul out, clear your throat and scream. See. You can't do it, can you? And at the very end, Rob has a pivotal line as Random Crew Member. I won't spoil it but it is fair to say the entire episode is leading up to Rob's big line. I'll post the link as soon as it becomes available. I know you've all been waiting for it.

Here's the fun. Lines are due back to the director 3 days before Christmas. Upside, I only have 3 lines. Really important lines, mind you. But only 3. Didn't need more than 3 really. I'm a fighter pilot. I don't have time to chit chat like a bunch of grandmas on a Sunday afternoon.